This popular, semi-religious, sixpenny magazine, established in 1860, achieved quickly a circulation that was record-breaking in its time. Edited by Dr. Norman Macleod, it was printed by Thomas Constable, and published (at first) in Edinburgh by Alexander Strahan and Co. Although, viewed in the light of its later issues, one cannot help feeling disappointed with the first volume, yet even there the pictures are distinctly interesting as a forecast, even if they do not call for any detailed notice by reason of their intrinsic merit. They rarely exceed a half page in size, and were engraved none too well by various craftsmen. Indeed, judging from the names of the artists, then as afterwards, given fully in the index of illustrations, it might not be unfair to blame the engravers still more strongly. The very fact that the illustrations are duly ascribed in a separate list is proof that, from the first, the editor recognised their importance. Such honourable recognition of the personality of an illustrator is by no means the rule, even in periodicals that have equal right to be proud of their collaborators. Where the artists' names are recorded it is rare to find them acknowledged so fully and thoroughly as in _Good Words_. In other magazines they are usually referred to under the title of the article they illustrate and nowhere else; or their name is printed (as in _Once a Week_) with a bare list of numerals showing the pages containing their pictures; but in _Good Words_ the subject, titles, and artists' names have always been accorded a special index. [Illustration: G. DU MAURIER 'GOOD WORDS' 1861, p. 579 A TIME TO DANCE] In the first volume, for 1860, W. Q. Orchardson--not then even an Associate of the Royal Academy--supplies nine drawings, engraved by F. Borders. Admirable in their own way, one cannot but feel that the signature leads one to expect something much more interesting; and, knowing the quality of Mr. Orchardson's later work, it is impossible to avoid throwing the blame on the engraver. Keeley Halswelle contributes six; in these you find (badly drawn or spoilt by the engraver) those water-lilies in blossom, which in after years became a mannerism in his landscape foregrounds. J. W. M'Whirter has four--one a group of _Autumn Flowers_ (p. 664), cut by R. Paterson, that deserves especial notice as a much more elaborate piece of engraving than any other in the volume. Erskine Nicol supplies two _genre_ pieces, the full-page, _Mary Macdonell and her friends_ (p. 216), being, most probably, a thoroughly good sketch, but here again the translator has produced hard scratchy lines that fail to suggest the freer play of pencil or pen, whichever it was that produced the original. Others by 'J. B.,' J. O. Brown, C. A. Doyle, Clarence Dobell, Jas. Drummond, Clark Stanton, Gourlay Steell, and Hughes Taylor, call for no particular comment.